Books read (16-23)
Judge Dredd: The Dark Judges, John Wagner (1980-85, 2013) (World Book Night)
British Summertime, Paul Cornell (2012)
Orbitsville, Bob Shaw (1975)
Burn This Book, ed. Toni Morrison (1975-2009, 2009)
Ship of Strangers, Bob Shaw (1978)
Miners In The Sky, Murray Leinster (1967)
Excession, Iain M. Banks (1996)
The Invisible Man, H.G. Wells (1897)

Films watched (44-50) 5 at the cinema, 1 DVD, 1 streamed
Bicycle Thieves
I'm So Excited
Evil Dead (remake)
Dark Habits
The Terminator (rewatch)
Robocop (not a rewatch! Never seen it before!)
Inception (rewatch)

Gigs, comedy, clubs etc (12-12)
Michaelangelo: Drawing Blood (theatre, Mumford, Cambridge)
Still no gigs!

Books incoming 0 (read 13/17)
Other than a couple of text books which I do not count for this list. With the 8 read I've made a proper dent in the unread bookshelves this month.

Good: British Summertime, Excession, Robocop.
Weird: Michaelangelo, which turned out to be interpretative dance, and I still had quite a cough, and spent the hours in the theatrically-fogged room trying not to choke while people pulled red sparkly intestines out of naked men.

Books read (11-15)
Flowers for Algernon, Daniel Keyes (1966)
The Fifth Head of Cerberus, Gene Wolfe (1972)
Anthology of Black Humour, ed. André Breton (1751-1951, 1966)
Advent, James Treadwell (2012)
The Falling Sky, Pippa Goldschmidt (2013)

Novellas read (1)
The Other Christmas Carol, David Wake

Films watched (32-43) 6 at the cinema, 3 DVD, 2 streamed, 1 tv
In The House
Trance
The Late Quartet
Tideland
The Secret In Their Eyes
Take Shelter
The Place Beyond The Pines
Buena Vista Social Club
Iron Sky
Iron Man 3
Elena
Iron Man 3 (rewatch)

Gigs, comedy, clubs etc (8-11)
Fast/Slow (film symposium, Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge)
Light Show (art, Hayward Gallery, London)
Austentatious (theatre, Jane Austen improv, Leicester Square Theatre, London)
Tom Crean (theatre, Mumford, Cambridge)
No gigs!

Books incoming 4 (two purchases, one loan, one gift) (read 12/17)

I did longer hours than usual getting the quarterly data out and up, and had a day off yesterday. I did waste some idling at the laptop but also:

Took two full bags to the charity shop, and came back with only two DVDs
Dismantled three large cardboard boxes to the point where they fit in the recycling bin. Broke the polystyrene inserts similarly to fit in the bin, which made very loud noises and perturbed the cat.
Went through the stuff under the kitchen table with the cleaner, who claims be be very good at just throwing things out, but in most cases she agreed that someone must want it if I could find the right home and it would be a shame to throw it out. She went away with a few train set pieces from Dad's aging set to show to her Friend Who Knows About That Sort Of Thing.
Read the gas/electric meters and submitted the readings
Turned the heating off because it's bloody April, damnit!
Couple of social planning emails
Walked 10.8 miles
- along Milton Road, where the cherry trees are just blooming and saying a shy "Hello!" to Spring, and the birches have their hands dug firmly in their overcoat pockets and their shoulders hunched against the cold and say "Not convinced iz Spring come back later"
- visited sphyg and E who slept a lot
- did light shopping of a tedious special diet/specialist shop/boring food nature (which also sells Booja Booja chocolates)
- and bought coffee from chap in market. My special tedious cereal now smells of coffee :-)
Did a load of laundry and hung it to dry
Went to cinema with S: The Place Beyond The Pines
Came back to dry laundry and brought it upstairs

With all that walking I still didn't manage to spot car numberplate 745. I hope one still exists, somewhere.

I think Saturday will have fewer, bigger things (possibly including Do All The Ironing then complain that wrists hurt), and prepare for Monday, as on Sunday I'm off out to London for Light Show and Austentatious and hopefully avoiding the crowds of the marathon. "And feed ozymandias_cat," says ozymandias_cat. Okay, I will put that on my list. "Also hamsters!" say the live_gerbils. Doctor Who goes on the list too (as it is important to include these things) though I see it is at 6:45 today because it leaps around the tv schedules in time (if not in space).

Whoops, got home yesterday from work and had a quick nap for 3 hours, then slept through the night for another 9 hours. Did an 8 hour day today and sleepy again. Still, I have Friday off as time in lieu. Hope I don't sleep through it!

Snowing again - I had planned on a couple of nice long walks today but instead I might test out the treadmill.

First I need to wait for my nail to dry. One tore, and I painted it with nail glue (like superglue) to try to save it, went to make breakfast (carefully), and then did the rookie mistake of touching it with a finger to see if it was dry. After 10 mins it was not dry, I now have blodgy glue (which still might not fix the nail) and a weird-feeling fingertip. Luckily I glued it while my hair dying was at the 'put conditioner in and leave for a while' stage, not the 'put the dye in and leave for no longer than 15 minutes'. When it has dried I can finish getting dressed and out and cat-feeding. Kitten came downstairs yesterday with polystyrene balls stuck to him, I think a big white squeaky monster might have been killed upstairs.

EDIT: Today I was sitting on the sofa at kittenhouse. To my left was the doorhandle, which had a rubber pompom attched to it by an elastic cord. Kitten was launching himself from the far end of the sofa, poinging off my lap, pouncing and catching the pompom, then running away with it across my lap to the far end of the sofa until the inevitable happened and the pompom was released to snap back to the door. Or my face. Whichever was closest.

The joints have started a big flare up again, ticket available for The Beat at the Junction tonight for anyone who can pick it up, shame to have it go to waste...
http://www.junction.co.uk/artist/5028

Monday was fine despite the poisoned joints, Mum visited and we had a nice tapas lunch at the place 50 metres away, and we talked for a few hours (nothing wrong with my jaw!), and she picked up a couple of things from the supermarket for me. A lazy morning and evening of reading (Wil McCarthy's The Collapsium, which with its two rival/co-operating scientist Declarant-Philanders dealing with problems that beset the Queendom in a weird future reminded me strongly of the last time I was here, reading Lem's The Cyberiad, with its two rival/co-operating scientist Constructors solving problems in a weird future... Lots of robots in The Collapsium too), less so watching films as while Mubi works here when the WiFi is up it takes 2 minutes to download each minute of film. Saw a couple of 15 minute shorts. Did not attempt the 246 minute Scorsese documentary on Italian film.

The grumpiness comes as I'm worse today than I was on Monday, I'm not even going to try getting downstairs to test my walking, and I have spent the morning so far sending my apologies and cancelling arrangements for today and Wednesday. By Thursday I'll probably be up to a couple of 30 minute walks, trying to get my speed back (Tun is out), and on Friday I come home. So should I just come home now (ouch, and if I can't make it to Holborn for dinner how do I make it home? Well, cabs and assistance and stuff) and do my recovering at home instead? Chiz, chiz. Ah, London, so full of things, so near, yet out of my reach. Grr. Fiddlesticks. etc.

But I had a lovely weekend in London. Shame about the rest of the week.

Wifi seems to be back, so here's the view from my room:
( picture window )

Today was the Man Ray exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, then a tasty late lunch. I don't know the answers to "What makes a good portrait?" or "What makes a good photograph?". The portraits were rarely comfortable or formal, the sitters often had a touch of a frown or unease, or the pictures were very staged and theatrical, often of actresses or dancers. And 90 years ago. Montages were done in camera, with double exposures etc, and painstaking processing. There were some striking effects in his magazine work, two dark kissing lips look like a bird on the wing. The 'Group of Surrealists' photo tickled me, a bunch of them lined up in two rows like a football team picture, not looking remotely surreal. Or was that the point? I mostly didn't get solarisation, but the portrait of Elsa Schiaparelli had a wonderful eerie washed-out effect. Lee Miller in a Bathing Suit (linky) was shot against a dark background column that turned out to be her shadow, cleverly placed, it could almost have been a different shadow.

Late lunch at Côte, charcuterie and a niçoise tuna (gorgeous tuna, seared outside with black pepper, still hot, and rare inside) and a floral glass of muscat while my friends tucked into the non-dairy-free creme caramel and chocolate pot which looked absolutely nommy. If it were merely a sin to eat creme caramel, I would totally have done so.

Books read (6-8)
Dotter of Her Father's Eyes, Mary M. Talbot and Bryan Talbot (2012) (graphic novel)
Wampeters, Foma and Granfalloons, Kurt Vonnegut Jr (1965-74, 1975)
Grandville, Bryan Talbot (2009) (graphic novel) (reread)
Grandville Mon Amour, Bryan Talbot (2010) (graphic novel)
Grandville Bête Noire, Bryan Talbot (2012) (graphic novel)
(Counting the last three as one "book" for fairly arbitrary reasons)

Films watched (11-19) 5 at the cinema, 2 DVD, 2 streamed
Chronicle
Bullhead
Hitchcock
No
A Liar's Autobiography
Wild Bill
Brakhage
I Give It A Year
Il Divo

Gigs (1-3)
Bright Club (amateur science comedy night at the Portland Arms, worth a visit)
Invisibility (art talk and workshop about invisibility through Junction University, v. interesting)
I Am Kloot (popular beat combo, Junction)
And I had a ticket for The Furies doing Clytemnestra but was ill and couldn't go.

Books incoming 3 (3 loans) (read 8/11)

Best film of the month was Bullhead, good in a terribly brutal, emotionally gutting, complex sort of a way, so not actually fun. But very good. Best mainstream movie was Hitchcock, entertaining and an intriguing look behind the scenes. A Liar's Autobiography = Willies at the Picturehouse; I Give it a Year = Willies at Cineworld. No was about the tv campaign in Chile when there was a public vote as to whether to keep Pinochet in - early use of tv advertising techniques, and scary given the importance of the decision and lack of experience of the campaign team, Gael García Bernal does a good hapless turn. He was also in Amores Perros which I rated highly last month. Mubi sent me Il Divo as a nod to the elections in Italy, but with so many political players I barely got a flavour of it.

Wow, that took a whole hour of peeling and chopping vegetables. Cooking the mushroom and aubergine down in a separate pan, then doing the same for the root veg, helps fit so much in the end into the big pot. I wonder if I even have eleven plastic tubs for freezing it?